Stephen Bainbridge is the William D. Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, where he currently teaches Business Associations, Mergers and Acquisitions, and a seminar on corporate governance. In past years, he has also taught Advanced Corporation Law, Corporate Finance, Securities Regulation, and Unincorporated Business Associations. Professor Bainbridge previously taught at the University of Illinois Law School (1988-1996). He has also taught at Harvard Law School as the Joseph Flom Visiting Professor of Law and Business (2000-2001), and as a visiting professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne (2005 and 2007) and at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo (1999).

In 2008, Bainbridge received the UCLA School of Law's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1990, the graduating class of the University of Illinois College of Law voted him "Professor of the Year."

Professor Bainbridge is a prolific scholar, whose work covers a variety of subjects, but with a strong emphasis on the law and economics of public corporations. He has written over 90 law review articles which have appeared in such leading journals as the Harvard Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. Bainbridge’s most recent books include: Corporate Governance After the Financial Crisis (2012); Business Associations: Cases and Materials on Agency, Partnerships, and Corporations (8th ed. 2012) (with Klein and Ramseyer); Agency, Partnerships, and Limited Liability Entities: Cases and Materials on Unincorporated Business Associations (3d ed. 2012) (with Klein and Ramseyer); Mergers and Acquisitions (3d ed. 2012); and The New Corporate Governance in Theory and Practice (2008).

Professor Bainbridge has been a Salvatori Fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a member of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Corporate Laws, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Markets and Morality, and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Practice Group.

In May 2014, Professor Bainbridge was the Cameron Fellow at the University of Auckland Faculty of Law. He was the Francis G. Pileggi Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Widener University School of Law in September 2005, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Maryland School of Law in November 2005.